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With two young children and a third on the way, Chanel Fleming and Terrence Phillips say keeping
food on the table and a roof over their heads has gotten harder this year.

“We try to save every penny we can, but it’s not happening,” Phillips, 24, said of efforts to
make ends meet with only a part-time job.

Last week, the family learned its landlord had not paid property taxes on the house they are
renting. Now, it is being foreclosed and they have to move.

“We’re not really sure what we’re going to do,” he said.

A new report shows economic conditions for Ohio children have gotten worse, despite the end of
the recession.

Nearly 1 in 3 kids lives in a home where no parent has a full-time, year-round job, and a
quarter of all children now live in poverty — less than $23,850 a year for a family of four.

Despite the gloomy economic news, the annual report released today by the Annie E. Casey
Foundation shows improvement in Ohio in education and health. For instance, more children are
attending preschool and graduating high school on time, and 95 percent of children now have health
insurance.

Ohio ranked 32nd among states for child poverty and 24th overall — unchanged from a year
ago.

“Looking at our overall rank being unchanged, we’re stagnant. It’s a sign of potential trouble
when you have persistent poverty,” said Dawn Wallace-Pascoe, project manager for the Kids Count
report at the Children’s Defense Fund-Ohio.

“Even though the economy shows all these signs of improvement, we’re not getting better as far
as children in poverty. It seems to be harder and harder for working families and lower-class
families to get a foothold.”

The national poverty rate dropped from 18 percent to 16 percent from 1990 to 2000, but it had
climbed to 22 percent by 2010 and has remained about that, with Ohio’s rate slightly higher.

And now 37 percent of Ohio children live in single-parent homes, up from 32 percent in 2005.

Maggie Spangler, executive director of the Columbus Early Learning Center on the East Side, said
many families struggle because of low-paying jobs, which also tend to be unstable.

“Families living with those kinds of jobs often are not guaranteed hours, and it’s way too easy
for their shifts to be cut entirely,” she said. “They wake up in the morning and go to work and
find out they don’t have a job.”

“Full-day preschool and child care help people to work and go to school, trying to make things
better,” Spangler said.

While there’s work to be done, “it’s a very optimistic time in our city and state,” she said,
referring in part to Mayor Michael B. Coleman’s announcement last week of an expansion of
tax-funded, full-day preschool under a partnership with the state.

The report often gets the attention of elected officials, drawing attention in recent years to
problems such as low-birthweight babies, poor graduation rates and drug and alcohol abuse.
Improvement in those areas was noted this year.

Chanel Fleming’s 5-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son recently qualified for a full-day
program at Hilltop Preschool, allowing her to look for a part-time job while she continues going to
school for a business degree.

“It’s hard to drop the kids off at 8:30 in the morning, be at school at 9 and turn around and be
back by 11:30 to pick them up,” said Fleming, 26. “Now I can look for a part-time job. That will
help a lot.”

Among states, kids are faring best in Massachusetts, Vermont, Iowa, New Hampshire and Minnesota
while Arizona, Louisiana, New Mexico and Mississippi scored lowest.